Installation For Candling Eggs And Optoelectronic System For Examining Under Radiation Such An Installation

Abstract

The invention relates to a system applicable to an installation for candling eggs, to determine the presence of fertilized eggs in the cells of the egg crate grid moving on a conveyor. Row by row, the analyzing device synchronously monitors the light emission on the eggs of the row and detection of the attenuated light of emerging beams. The monitoring includes at least two close cycles of light emission. During the first cycle, which is of short duration to avoid causing glare of the detectors of the detecting device, the coordinates of possible empty cells in a row are determined and stored. During the second cycle, which is of longer duration, the coordinates of fertilized eggs of the row are determined and stored. The egg candling installation advantageously also marks the eggs, depending in particular on whether they are fertilized or not.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]The present application is a continuation of pending International patent application PCT / FR2006 / 002895 filed on Dec. 22, 2006 which designates the United States and claims priority from French patent application 0513252 filed on Dec. 23, 2005 and 0600018 filed on Jan. 3, 2006, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The invention relates to techniques for visiometric examination applied to objects arranged for examination in defined discrete locations and in successive rows, in a continuous series following a regular spatial distribution that is repeated periodically. The concept of visiometric examination is taken here as including all techniques of the optoelectronic type that involve the capture of an image that detects a light beam coming from each object submitted to examination under incident rays, as well as an analysis by image processing on the received signals, controlled by adapted ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0019]It therefore becomes necessary to be able to avoid risks of glare for the detection sensor, while preserving the possibility of fine discriminations between light intensities at levels relatively close to one another, that is, to avoid a strong contrast, which seems completely contradictory.

[0030]Thus, in the case where the cells present a quincunx configuration, it is advantageous to group the rows of cells two by two, providing a light source made up of a number of LED that is twice the number of cells per row. In this configuration, each diode is activated in correspondence with the passage in its field of one row of cells out of two. In other words, in this configuration, half of the diodes are associated with even-numbered lines of cells, and the other half with odd-numbered lines.

[0033]It can also be useful, however, to conduct a more thorough analysis by working in more than two stages. In particular, the invention makes it possible to draw up useful statistics by recording the results in computerized databases and submitting them to specially adapted computations to determine such data as the profitability of fertilization or the quality of a delivery received in a hatchery.

Problems solved by technology

Especially in the case of an installation in which the egg crates are treated linearly in a marking station after the visiometric examination station, the problem arises of being able to mark the eggs efficiently and rapidly by directly utilizing the signal produced by numerical processing of the images captured by the visiometric examination while taking care not to risk breaking the egg shells.

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